Savvy property technology is where Fintech meets Proptech. The company provides commercial property stakeholders (Landlords, property managers, asset managers etc) a way to manage their building(s)/ portfolio and to keep tabs on their tenants. The platform preceded to a slew of disparate features, poor navigation and simply didn’t provide users with the data they needed, making the experience complex to use and the company experiencing a drop off in subscriptions.
I was part of an ambitious project to solely redesign the experience, manage user researchers for a fast growing startup.
Savvy Webapp
The problem
The original webapp
Since 2018, Savvy says been attempting to take the PropTech industry by storm by offering building data that nobody else on the market was/is offering to a global network of property/assets managers and Land Lords.
The webapp — designed in between 2018-2019, failed to gain traction from Savvy’s target audience. Fundamental usability was challenging (navigation mostly). Disparate features were hidden. Users and their motivations were not understood. Property and tenant data users were not interested in the data set savvy were collecting
The Original Savvy webapp
The challenge
Capture the Magic in 3 Months
Our goal for the project was to gain an understanding of savvy’s users and allow the users to guide the design of the platform. This process was extremely insightful as Savvy had never carried out any form of user testing prior to me joining the team. Meaning every decision was made on presumptions, resulting in the platform becoming undesirable to Savvy’s target audience. Our ambitions was to create a strong foundation for expansion, while at the same time only fixing what was broken.
Our high-level goals were to:
- Make it fast and easy to use for everyone, everywhere.
- Understand users, their goals, motivations and the data users considered vital to perform their individual job roles.
- Create a platform for innovation and deeper engagement.
My Role
I was the lead designer on this project. I led the entire design process, from discovery to creating the High Fidelity mockups and prototypes to hand-off to the developer.
I also led and recruited a User Researcher to interview all user types and user test the original web app.
In addition, I worked alongside the COO, Content Strategist, Product Managers and Developer.
- The new app was launched globally on July 24th, 20120 in phases.
Discovery
Initial explorations & research
At the outset of the project, we didn’t have a clear understanding of our users, their motivation, pain points etc, but we knew the platform was not being used, the navigation was causing usability issues and the platform was not scalable. It was almost impossible to start this process without pre-existing insights, therefore, I recruited a talented researcher Sansin to explore, interview users and user test the then original webapp.
We had a month to explore and research. We started by interviewing and user testing the original webapp with 5 asset managers, 5 property managers and 5 admin staff to understand their motivations, pain points and to gain a general understanding of how Savvy should assist them. We asked questions like: What would you ideal dashboard look like? How do you currently manage your property portfolio? These are some of our high-level findings:
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- Users want to see different data based on their user type
Savvy was showing all 4 user types the same data set which consisted mostly of smart building data such an occupacity density. The building managers were blown away by this data, but the asset managers were extremely disappointed as this is not the data they require for their job role. We learned that asset managers were in need of data such as Tenant financial history, Total rent collected, total achievable rent etc.
The admin staff (receptionist) were confused by the data provided to them and were only really interested in visitor management and the company newsfeed. Resulting in all asset managers and admin staff stating they would not use Savvy unless the platform greatly improved, as they found the platform lacked the data they required.
- Users want to see different data based on their user type
- Users liked the representation of the data, but struggled with navigation and found the webapp to be dull
Users had issues navigating around the webapp and pointed to the fact that the original navigation changed from page to page as the reason for this. They, however, found the flow of the platform is to inline with their expectations. They also found the data was very easy to understand compared to other applications, but in whole found the platform to be dull.
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Based on our all of our findings shown above, we narrowed our focus into 4 areas for potential improvement of our original dashboard:
- Improve the data we provide
- Improve/create global navigation
- Improve the look and feel
User Research session
Would I use this platform? absolutely not! It is dull and information light.
Design
High-Fidelity mockups
The user research guided the entire design process as well as the semantics (data displayed). Not much attention was given to the user flow as users completely understood the flow of the platform. However, the UI was dramatically changed inline with the user Feedback.
Each User type (Asset Manager, Property Manager, Staff and admin) now are presented with data that relates directly to their job role and the goals they need to achieve on a daily basis.
Savvy also White-labels their webapp, so this had to be taken into consideration when redesigning the platform.
Wireframe
Asset Manager
Asset Manager overview
Property: By company
Company finical data
Property Manager
Property Manager overview
Building issue
Building content
Company demise data
Admin + Employee
Visitor managerment
Company Details
Newsfeed
White label examples
Prototype
Webapp prototype
Challenges and Compromises
Unfortunately, due to Savvy’s previous experience with UX/UI Designers the CEO Freddie was extremely cautious and even though the platform already existed he wanted to create a (redesign) MVP. Meaning some of the UX issues witnessed on user testing he was unwilling to change at this stage. Due to Covid the entire development team was put on furlough meaning we also had technical constraints, while still providing more value to our users.
Once Savvy was relaunched the platforms signups increased by 50% almost immediately.
Platform release
The platform was released to users in a phases to ensure we did not shock the them, and allow them to make behaviour changes gradually. The new platform was met with raving reviews.